Oil Production

A GUSHER. Crude-oil output by OPEC jumped to 24.09 million barrels a day in March - the highest level since 1981, the Middle East Economic Survey reported Monday. That helped to push already weak oil prices lower. Crude oil for May delivery settled at $18.44 a barrel, down 71 cents. The newsletter estimated that OPEC's oil production last month was marginally higher than last year's monthly high of 24.0 million barrels a day, reached in December. The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries agreed in November on a production ceiling of 22.09 million barrels a day. High production levels pushed oil prices lower last month and in the first week of April.

People wait in a long line for gasoline on Feb. 26, 1974 at a Tenneco gas station at Griffin and Lake Underhill during a gas shortage. Note the sign in the background, which puts the price of premium gasoline at 51 cents per gallon. The U.S. Department of State website states, "during the 1973 Arab-Israeli War, Arab members of the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) imposed an embargo against the United States in retaliation for the U.S. decision to re-supply the Israeli military and to gain leverage in the post-war peace negotiations.

Crude oil production by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries rose in February by 150,000 barrels per day to 25.32 million, according to a monthly Reuters survey released Tuesday. The figures suggest OPEC miscalculation when setting quotas during a period of economic recession, rather than rampant cheating, are to blame. High OPEC volume has led to weakness in the world market, where prices around $19 a barrel for the benchmark Brent Blend of crude oil are below October's $21.

Red-light cameras When will the arguments over red-light cameras end? No one in their right mind wants to pay for penalties of any kind, or taxes. But sometimes there is a choice about what we do that will cost money and/or time. Running red lights is a choice a driver makes. The result at the majority of intersections and the majority of the time is of no consequence. But sometimes the result can be fatal and involve innocent people. Cameras are needed because we drivers have become complacent with running red lights.

CARACAS, Venezuela -- Venezuelan oil production has surpassed 3 million barrels a day for the first time since a national strike crippled the industry, the president of the state oil monopoly said Saturday. "The task now that we have reached that level is to maintain and stabilize production," said Ali Rodriguez, president of Petroleos de Venezuela S.A. Officials said Venezuela had an agreement with the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries allowing it to exceed its quota to make up for lost revenue during the two-month strike.

A natural gas leak has forced ARCO Alaska Inc. to halt oil production at its Swanson River oil field until the leak is plugged, company officials said. ARCO produces 6,000 barrels of oil daily from the field on the Kenai Peninsula south of Anchorage, but production was halted Thursday because of the leak.The leak was discovered last week at a well that has been shut since 1984. Officials said the gas dissipated into the air and they do not know how much gas has leaked since they discovered it Dec. 12. Up to 20 barrels of oil also came to the surface and were contained on the drill pad.ARCO called in specialists to help plug the leak.

Last year, state leaders unveiled a long-range plan to end Alaska's oil dependency. But now, with oil production down by a quarter from the late-1980s peak, the plan is near ruins, victim of a budget standoff. The dispute stems from a looming budget gap, the result of declining production from aging North Slope oil fields that produces 80 percent of state government revenue. The gap is forecast to grow to $1.3 billion by 2005 without corrective action. Daily oil production that exceeded 2 million barrels in the late 1980s is down this year to under 1.5 million barrels.

LAGOS, Nigeria -- Protesters besieged oil platforms run by Royal Dutch/Shell Group Cos. and ChevronTexaco Corp for a second day Monday, shutting down 90,000 barrels a day in oil production, company officials said. Hundreds of protesting villagers from the Kula community, including women and children, on Sunday invaded two oil-pumping facilities owned by Shell in the Ekulama oilfields and another belonging to ChevronTexaco in the swamps of the oil-rich delta, demanding to see top officials of both companies.

DOHA, Qatar -- U.S. oil engineers predicted Thursday that Iraq will return to about 8 percent of its prewar oil production within days -- enough to satisfy as much as three-quarters of domestic consumption. But many hurdles remain to ramping up production enough to bring in much-needed reconstruction money. Before the war, Iraq was pumping about 2.5 million barrels of crude a day. The taps were turned off in mid-March before the war began. Coalition-led oil crews restarted the flow Wednesday from four southern wells.

In a triumph for the hawks of OPEC, the cartel's oil ministers agreed Saturday on a tighter-than-expected production plan that could nudge prices to the $20-$22 a barrel range and further strengthen OPEC's hand.The Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries decided to produce 9 percent less crude oil in the fall than it had planned, a step that will tend to constrict supplies and thus boost prices.The cartel extended its fixed price of $18 per barrel for the rest of the year. But the price of non-OPEC crude oil will probably spurt immediately as oil traders react to the OPEC agreement.

The price of gasoline is rising again after falling slightly ahead of the Independence Day holiday, and with pressure on the price of crude oil, prices could continue to go up in the weeks to come, experts say. The average price of a regular gallon of gasoline rose to $3.55 nationally on Friday, up about 7 cents from a week ago. In Orlando, the average was $3.42, an increase of 8 cents from a week ago, but just one penny higher than a month ago,...

WASHINGTON -- Preoccupied by the election, Americans may be under the delusion that most major social and economic changes proceed from the ballot box. Not so. The latest reminder of this comes from a surprising source: the annual World Energy Outlook report from the Paris-based International Energy Agency (IEA). In the report, the IEA comes to the startling conclusion that, by 2020, the United States will displace Saudi Arabia -- albeit temporarily -- as the world's largest oil producer.

It was arguably Ronald Reagan 's favorite joke. In one version, two kids -- one an optimist, the other a pessimist -- rush downstairs on Christmas morning. The pessimistic kid gets a new bike and weeps that he'll probably break it soon. The optimistic kid is presented with an enormous pile of manure and squeals with delight: "There's got to be a pony in here somewhere!" In fact, the joke took on a life of its own in the Reagan White House . Whenever bad news came in, someone would remark, "There's got to be a pony in there somewhere.

WASHINGTON -- Not a word has been said in the presidential debates about what may be the most urgent and consequential issue in the world: climate change. President Obama understands and accepts the scientific consensus that the burning of fossil fuels is trapping heat in the atmosphere, with potentially catastrophic long-term effects. Mitt Romney 's view, as on many issues, is pure quicksilver -- impossible to pin down -- but when he was governor of Massachusetts, climate change activists considered him enlightened and effective.

In the early days of California's oil boom, derricks crowded beaches, covered hillsides and dominated cityscapes. If a road was in the way of the oil, the road was moved. Nowadays, after years of falling oil production, the state is seeing a new drilling boom because of high petroleum prices. In July, an average of 53 rotary rigs were exploring for crude and natural gas in California, the most for that month in 22 years, according to industry data. Drillers looking to revive old urban oil fields find themselves surrounded by homes and businesses that weren't there way back when, and the companies are negotiating increasingly complex agreements with neighbors and local officials on rules governing aesthetics, noise, hours of operation and much more.

Setting the stage for confrontation over the massive National Petroleum Reserve, Alaska Gov. Sean Parnell announced the state would withdraw from a joint planning process with the federal government that is designed to shape the location and scope of development on one of the nation's largest untapped onshore oil reserves. In a surprise communique late Wednesday, the Republican governor said the state's decision to back out as a cooperating partner reflects the federal Department of Interior's "complete failure" to take into account the state's preferences for development and the federal government's "complete lack of respect for views of the state.

Tropical Storm Isaac is curtailing oil production along the Gulf of Mexico and threatening refineries, which could send already rising gasoline prices up another 10 cents in the coming week. The U.S. Bureau of Safety and Environmental Enforcement, which oversees offshore oil production, said Sunday that nearly 25 percent of the current daily oil production in the Gulf of Mexico has been shut, with nearly 50 rigs and oil platforms already evacuated in advance of the storm.

Judging from an internal U.S. Southern Command report on long-term oil production in Latin America, Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is unlikely to meet his promises of energy assistance to neighboring countries and could even find himself with problems to keep production up at home. Before we get into whether the study is realistic or wishful thinking by U.S. military analysts, let's look at the report's main conclusions. Overall, Venezuela, Mexico and Ecuador will face growing production problems because, among other things, "investors are becoming more cautious as some governments are changing the rules of investments," the report says.

By Kim Murphy and This post has been corrected, as indicated below., September 9, 2012

SEATTLE -- A potential new energy frontier opened early Sunday in the U.S. Arctic, as Royal Dutch Shell plumbed a drill bit into the bed of the Chukchi Sea, 70 miles off the coast of northwest Alaska. The oil company that has spent six years and $4.5 billion trying to launch America's first offshore oil production in the Arctic announced that its Noble Discoverer had anchored northwest of Alaska's North Slope and begun drilling the "top hole" of an exploration well. The work was the first step toward drilling a pilot hole that will go about 1,300 feet deep.

TERRE HAUTE, IND. -- A company is going to search for oil around the Indiana State University campus. Terre Haute's public works board voted Monday to give permission for a Michigan company to begin seismic testing at several locations on university-owned property near the city's downtown. The Tribune-Star reports university Vice President Diann McKee says the testing will be done after the school's homecoming activities the first weekend of October. A city zoning board earlier this month approved the university's request for oil exploration at a former industrial site on campus near a site that yielded large amounts of oil more than a century ago. Numerous other oil wells are in operation around Terre Haute and a large discovery last year contributed to Indiana's oil production hitting a 10-year high in 2011.